Two Medicine

Glacier National Park, MT - Wednesday , June 29, 2011

Our stay in the park has been wonderful.  You’d be surprised at how many Florida folks we’ve run into.  Even the camp host here at the St. Mary campground (our basecamp) is from Florida.

Wednesday we took a drive to Two Medicine, a supposedly little visited portion of the park.  However, since the Going To The Sun Road is closed because of snow, we’re finding these little visited areas of the park are seeing major use. We considered going on a boat tour on Two Medicine Lake, but the wind was pretty fierce, so we decided to do some hiking. The scenery here is amazing.

While we were picnicking at the camp store, we decided our tuna sandwich needed a local component. We found a new favorite, Moose Drool Brown Ale from Big Sky Brewing Co in Missoula, MT. We also met a young lady who was trying to get a ride to St. Mary just to see what was there.  One couple said they’d give her a ride but they weren’t coming back to Two Medicine.  She said no problem, she’d find a ride back.  That’s a 35 mile stretch of mostly deserted road.  She had more guts than we do.  We’d be wondering the whole time how  we were gonna get back.

On the way back from our Appistoki Falls hike we took a parallel trail that was separated from the main trail by no more than10 feet.  About halfway back, we stopped and watched 4 mountain goats pass by on the main trail.  We think they had no idea we were standing there.

On our next hike the guide book said that to reach the base of Running Eagle Falls you crossed a bridge over a creek.  Well, we searched and searched that creek and never could find the bridge.  We could see the viewing platform at the bottom of the falls tantalizing us in the distance, but we couldn’t figure out how to get there. Finally a Ranger showed up and we asked her about the bridge.  She told us that they remove the bridge during the snow melt so that high rushing water in the creek won’t destroy the bridge.  Then she proceeded to point out a pile of lumber on the other side of the creek that was the bridge.

On the way out of Two Medicine, EJ just couldn’t resist  playing in the snow. Pretty poor excuse for a snowman.

From there it was on to the town of East Glacier Park.  Here was another big lodge built by the railroads.  Near each entrance into the park, there are one of these lodges.  We stopped at a café to buy another cup of coffee with the hopes of being able to use their internet connection.  No luck there.  They wanted 3 bucks for a 15 minute session with no guarantee of how fast the connection would be.  We decided we’d wait. When we left the café, we saw the girl who was trying to hitch a ride to St. Mary.  We never did find out if she made it or not.

Back to St. Mary and a visit to the lodge there.  Our quest was to buy tour tickets for tomorrow on the Red Bus to Waterton Provincial Park in Canada.  We knew that the bus stopped at this lodge so we figured you should be able to buy tickets here.  Long story shorter, we were sent in a circle to a succession of locations each confident that the other location sold tickets.  Bottom line, we couldn’t find anyone to sell us tickets.  Hard to believe we couldn’t find anyone to take our money!

Back to camp where later that evening we had some visitors enjoying our “yard”.

BG Miles Today	0	BG Total Miles	3381
Eat Out total $	228.43	BG Total Fuel $	1694.53
Entertainment total $	58	Total Camping $	427.21
E Miles Today	75	E Total Miles	1126.5
E Total Fuel $	227.41	Day # of Trip	29